There's no app for that...
I'm not sure if I should apologize, or pay homage. I'm about to go on a rant (more or less) about technology that doesn't do exactly what I want, how I want it. This is a genre pioneered by the inestimable http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/ who, like me, realizes but doesn't want to like the fact that technology is complicated and people will use it in different ways that are next to impossible to predict during design.
Anyway, here's my beef. I want the iPhone (which has eleventy-billion apps that do everything you could possibly want, according to Apple) to handle Exchange tasks/to-dos just like they're handled in Outlook/Windows Mobile. In Outlook or in Windows Mobile, if I create a Task in Exchange, and set a reminder on it (which I use in conjunction with but almost in place of the Due Date), I'll get an alert at the set time. I also have the ability to "put off" the reminder/task (like hitting Snooze on the alarm clock) for some period of time.
For me, if I get a reminder at 2pm that I need to enter my time for the pay period (or whatever) but I'm not my desk or otherwise busy, I want to be able to say "remind me again in 15 minutes". Otherwise, I'll dismiss the reminder and then promptly forget to do what I tried to remind myself to do. Because about 75% of my work day is stuff I hadn't planned on doing that day (or at that time), I use this system pretty heavily.
Can't be done with the iPhone. When there was no Exchange support, that made sense. When there was no way to do push notifications, that made sense. Now that both exist, it makes no sense. The iPhone Exchange support doesn't include Tasks *at all*, for starters. I'm sure this is mostly political, as Apple and Microsoft don't get alone. Office on the Mac has sucked forever, and Entourage (the Outlook equivalent) is possibly the worst piece of software ever written by man. But with Apple realizing that Exchange isn't going anywhere they made the right decision to roll Exchange support into Snow Leopard and the iPhone ("People want to buy an iPhone, but they can't integrate it with their work systems! What do we do?!"), it's particularly irritating that they don't seem to want to do it completely.
There are apps available that will kludge in access to Exchange tasks, but nothing yet that uses Push AND allows task reminders to be pushed back/snoozed. The pieces are there. If you set an Alarm in the Clock app so can enable a Snooze option. So it's possible for the OS to be aware that it needs to make a certain sound at a certain time, display a message box, and then accept input to clear or re-set the alert time. Clearly, it's possible to transfer information from the iPhone to an Exchange account. Yet doing both together as a single process is like putting a man on Mars.
What's most frustrating is that the functionality for this has existed long since before the iPhone was first launched. And 3 models/OS revs later, still no luck.
Posted via email from Dann's posterous
Anyway, here's my beef. I want the iPhone (which has eleventy-billion apps that do everything you could possibly want, according to Apple) to handle Exchange tasks/to-dos just like they're handled in Outlook/Windows Mobile. In Outlook or in Windows Mobile, if I create a Task in Exchange, and set a reminder on it (which I use in conjunction with but almost in place of the Due Date), I'll get an alert at the set time. I also have the ability to "put off" the reminder/task (like hitting Snooze on the alarm clock) for some period of time.
For me, if I get a reminder at 2pm that I need to enter my time for the pay period (or whatever) but I'm not my desk or otherwise busy, I want to be able to say "remind me again in 15 minutes". Otherwise, I'll dismiss the reminder and then promptly forget to do what I tried to remind myself to do. Because about 75% of my work day is stuff I hadn't planned on doing that day (or at that time), I use this system pretty heavily.
Can't be done with the iPhone. When there was no Exchange support, that made sense. When there was no way to do push notifications, that made sense. Now that both exist, it makes no sense. The iPhone Exchange support doesn't include Tasks *at all*, for starters. I'm sure this is mostly political, as Apple and Microsoft don't get alone. Office on the Mac has sucked forever, and Entourage (the Outlook equivalent) is possibly the worst piece of software ever written by man. But with Apple realizing that Exchange isn't going anywhere they made the right decision to roll Exchange support into Snow Leopard and the iPhone ("People want to buy an iPhone, but they can't integrate it with their work systems! What do we do?!"), it's particularly irritating that they don't seem to want to do it completely.
There are apps available that will kludge in access to Exchange tasks, but nothing yet that uses Push AND allows task reminders to be pushed back/snoozed. The pieces are there. If you set an Alarm in the Clock app so can enable a Snooze option. So it's possible for the OS to be aware that it needs to make a certain sound at a certain time, display a message box, and then accept input to clear or re-set the alert time. Clearly, it's possible to transfer information from the iPhone to an Exchange account. Yet doing both together as a single process is like putting a man on Mars.
What's most frustrating is that the functionality for this has existed long since before the iPhone was first launched. And 3 models/OS revs later, still no luck.
Posted via email from Dann's posterous